


caught in the throat

by nereid



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 08:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2143920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sometimes when he watches her (more often that not, if he's being honest) he thinks he would like to take her dancing somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	caught in the throat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subjunctive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/gifts).



He watches her hands sometimes from across the camp sharpening knives or sometimes across a table while her fingers tap on its wooden surface or sometimes even her hips in a lake when she goes swimming and just in the moment before she jumps into the cold water and sometimes when he watches her (more often that not, if he's being honest) he thinks he would like to take her dancing somewhere. He'll never take her dancing, he's not stupid enough to think otherwise, because there's no dancing he could take her to, and even if there was dancing somewhere, she wouldn't go with him even if he asked, which he wouldn't do anyway. But if there was a world, if there could be a world in which he could take her dancing - sometimes he likes to think about that world.

 

But those are thoughts for a different lifetime or the same lifetime in a completely different universe, so he doesn't spend much time on them. He's practical if he's anything, really, so he uses the resources he has the best way he can think of: on the days that he gets to choose his company for a hunt, he chooses Raven. Well, sometimes he does, at least. He would like to choose her most of the time, but that would be a pattern and someone always notices patterns eventually and he wouldn't like that, so he doesn't choose her always. He chooses her when he hasn't had a chance to see her around much, when she avoids him and when she avoids him even more if he's in his tent or near it (she never came back after the first time, which seems weird to him and he'd talk to her if he thought there was a chance she'd tell him anything in response. Or do anything other than laugh at him or roll his eyes or both. Even if no one in their right mind could blame him for being curious about her and about her not coming back, he's a guy and she's a girl,and not just any regular girl. Anyone with eyes can see that she's hot. And heartbroken looks good on her too, especially when she takes her clothes off.)

 

Most days he has to actively discourage himself from entertaining ideas about her. He doesn't love her, he couldn't love her. But he's here and he's doing things and maybe he could do things for her or be things for her. Maybe he could be a rebound or a best friend or something else entirely. someone she'd like.

 

He thinks the Earth is to blame, ensnaring him with her senses and making him want things. The air is still a necessity here, as it's always been, but it's not scarce and he doesn't have to fear he'll be without it. It just makes him want to enjoy it all more. He touches trees and grass and traces his fingers over the surface of water and he just lives. Well, as much as he can anyway, between all the life and death struggles. But he likes Earth and living, he really does.

 

He is very careful to avoid anyone noticing any of this, of course. It wouldn't do to have the hundred thinking he was capable of such sentimentality.

 

(It's better to be the boy who started an anarchy then the boy who started an anarchy because he was scared.)

 

But still: he slips. If he's not careful enough, he looks at her for too long when they go hunting. Looks at the shotgun in her hands, her bare neck when she pulls her hair away from it. He looks away in the end. He thinks that if he looked at her for too long, he might forget there are almost a hundred other people here, who he promised a future to. And if he forgot, if he took a break, if he let himself catch his breath, well that would maybe work out for him, but what would happen to everyone else? He came here for his sister and he'll keep her safe, always.

 

That doesn't mean he stops watching Raven. He does, he watches and he notices. He likes that she can surprise him still, likes that apparently he's intent on letting hee surprise him. Because sometimes if they haven't really talked that much in a while and he's just stuck with staring at her, he forgets sometimes that she's other things too. Sure, she's that girl who came to his tent and that looks good naked. She's also the girl who can build bombs using barely nothing. The girl who can hunt with the best of them (she's better with a gun than he is, and that's such a turn on, it's almost embarrassing.

 

The thing that's a bit different about Raven is: he doesn't feel like he has to save her. Hey, he probably wouldn't if he tried. He's trained his mind to be alert and his body to be able but she doesn't need physical protection. And the probably sad fact is he's not sure he knows how to do anything else. If she looks like she's been crying over Finn, he doesn't know what to say to her. He'd have sex with her again, if he thought it would help. (If he thought she'd go for it.). But he thinks she wouldn't, and he likes to think he knows enough about her to know these kinds of things.

He almost carries her to bed once, which is the closest to anything with them as it gets these days. She falls asleep sitting on the ground, her back against a tree, making bullets. Most everyone's gone to sleep already and he sees her alone and he could help her now. He doesn't know if she likes to be touched or doesn't like to be touched and he thinks for a while about carrying her into his bed, because that's how he could help her. But then he remembers, he remember that he's Bellamy Blake and that she's Raven Reyes and he's not going to fucking carry her anywhere. He kneels down next to her instead and taps her gently on the shoulder.

(Bellamy knows she wouldn't want him to carry her off, to play a knight for her. She wouldn't, and that's all that counts.)

 

"Raven, you should go to bed," he whispers.

She refuses his help with standing up. She doesn't object when he walks with her to her tent, though, and that's a victory in itself. And he likes that there's something he can do for her, even if it isn't much. Even if it amounts to, well, nothing.

 

He thinks then that maybe he doesn't have to save her in order to love her. He could learn to love someone like this, without having to take care of her every step of the way. Maybe he could even grow to like it. (Except that he obviously doesn't love her. But maybe he could learn on her, for future reference.)

 

They're hunting today and they're walking slowly and then she pulls him down on the ground behind a bush. He doesn't see it, but then she shows him some animal he doesn't know the name to in the distance. She puts a finger to her lips to show him to keep quiet and he's a little offended that she thinks he needs her to tell him that. But she makes the branches and the leaves form a hole in the bush and she aims her shotgun and fires and that's dinner.

 

"Nice work, Shooter," he says and she grins.

"Nice work."

 

\---

 

 

(Bellamy Blake is a boy who'd like to take a girl named Raven Reyes dancing. He can't, but he doesn't mind that much, as long as she's around. Bellamy likes life when she's around.)

 

 

(Oh fuck; it turns out he might just be in love with her anyway.)


End file.
